Mike Radtke

Mike Radtke is co-founder and lead consultant for New Roots Consulting LLC, providing coaching, teaching, and support to organizations through their lean transformations. Mike previously served in different leadership capacities for ThedaCare over the last 15 years, including roles as an improvement facilitator, ancillary services manager, director of diagnostic imaging, and most recently as an operational vice president with oversight of areas including perioperative services, trauma, air medical, therapies, and rehab. Prior to his leadership roles, Mike worked for six years as a physical therapist at one of ThedaCare’s critical access hospitals in New London. Mike was first introduced to lean process improvement and leadership practices in 2003 as ThedaCare began their lean journey. He had the opportunity to learn and apply lean practices both as a member of the improvement department and as an operation leader. Mike was part of the team that initially created ThedaCare’s lean management system as documented in Kim Barnas’ book Beyond Heros. He has been faculty with Catalysis since 2012, teaching lean management system behaviors and practices throughout North America. Mike also teaches and coaches A3 Thinking, Coaching for Improvement, and recently created a workshop on Kata in Healthcare, which explores how to build patterns of continuous improvement and coaching competency to complement A3 thinking and practice.  He also provides executive coaching support for healthcare organizations. Mike has a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from the University of Wisconsin—La Crosse and is currently pursuing his Master’s degree in Organizational Change Leadership from UW—Platteville. Mike has taught at numerous conferences throughout the United States on lean and lean leadership in healthcare, including being the keynote speaker at the Maine Lean Summit in 2013.